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So Much More Than Metonymy

Ugh. Lesson that will soon be forgotten, but bears repeating: SAVE YOUR POSTS AS YOU WORK. Otherwise you risk getting really, really pissed off for a few minutes and thinking that life sucks and so does Firefox.

But Firefox doesn’t suck: it actually bravely tried to help me save my post and I still recommend it highly (don’t have it? Click on the sidebar and get it, silly!). It was just that one evil site that wouldn’t let us be.

Okay. Restart:

Reya: You were right. Saying that seeing a Washington landmark on a postcard can provide the same thrill as the real thing was naïve at best. I actually reminded myself of my evil former neighbor lady who, when she heard that I would very much want to stop her inane chattering at 3:30 am one early Wednesday on account of being a wee sleep-deprived thanks in part to the baby (and in large part to her penchant for just that kind of asshole behavior), she gently placed her hand on mine and with the look of a very wise crone told me, "I know JUST how you feel. I have a puppy back in my home state, you know!"

Oh definitely. I’m sure your puppy back in your home state, approximately 1,428 miles away from DC according to Google Maps, is currently keeping you up nights. Now that she’s gone, I can only hope that her puppy avenges me somehow.

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Back to the original topic:It’s one thing to talk about landmarks or even seeing them on the back of a $20, staring back at you in a grand and dignified manner.

It’s quite another to, after having a lovely lunch with the awesome SoloMother, have the rare treat to take a leisurely stroll down Sixteenth Street NW; and following the gentle slope of the hill to make it there.

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The White House.

In the long year we’ve been in DC, I had never been to it. I’d been by it, walked nearby, gotten stuck in traffic a few blocks away from it, and wondered all along how it would be "in person."

I can tell you, if you’ve never been, that it is as white as a magnolia blossom.

And it is also very quaint and pretty. It has this antiquated, charming look and radiates peace and serenity despite the throngs of people trying to get a picture or video of it. It helps that there is a generous distance between the fence and the house itself, and that Pennsylvania Avenue is closed right in front of the main gate of course, but there is something more to it.

The house, to me, seemed somehow frozen in time. It belongs in a more genteel and elegant time, away from the guy selling the pictures with the Presidents’ cutouts or the guy walking nearby toting his "Stop aggression toward tourists" something-or-other banner. Or perhaps it’s simpler: it is a simple reminder of how this country, the prima donna and the bully and the rabbit’s foot of the world, started: with endless land and endless prospects and so many freedoms that it was necessary to come up with a separate (and supremely important) document just to make sure that the country could actually stick together in the first place.

I’m not sure that any of the people standing about thought what I’m thinking right now, or that it would matter very much.

What matters then?

I think you should go and pay a little visit to the White House and see for yourself.